1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and a system for recommending television programs that meet user's taste based on information representing the contents of television programs.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have heretofore been known systems for judging user's taste for television programs based on user's manual control actions made for viewing television programs, and recommending television programs based on the user's taste using text information of an EPG (Electronic Program Guide). For example, Japanese laid-open patent publication No. 7-135621 discloses a system which takes into account keywords by breaking up EPG text information of television programs preferred by the user and determining the frequency of appearance of keywords.
With the disclosed system, since keywords that appear frequently may not necessarily be characteristic keywords, the user may find an unexpected television program recommended by the system.
The disclosed system may not handle general nouns well. For example, the word “case” may appear in both the EPG text of a news program and the EPG text of a suspense drama. However, a news program and a suspense drama are clearly different from each other from the standpoint of people's taste. If only the keyword “case” is simply included in a user profile, then it contributes equally to the levels of recommendation for the television programs that are completely different in nature from each other.
The disclosed system only recommends those television programs which have keywords of high points, and fails to recommend television programs containing other keywords that human beings are able to guess with ease.